


Burning Only Makes Me Brighter

by lonewytch



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Kissing, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 22:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonewytch/pseuds/lonewytch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a dim bar, all sultry lights and curling smoke, where he saw him as he was passing through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning Only Makes Me Brighter

**Author's Note:**

> Written for who_contest 's drabble challenge on livejournal, for the prompt "Kiss."

 

It was a dim bar, all sultry lights and curling smoke, where he saw him as he was passing through. Of course, it was an obvious location for Jack Harkness; propping up a bar, knocking back shots, flirting with every human and alien who stood near him.

The sight of Jack was still painful to him. The man was a solid and inexorable pillar of black, static in the twisting timelines inside his head – neither moving nor changing. Events were forced to flow around him, adapt to his shape and solidity. But the Doctor had come to peace with that, and compassion welled in him now as he watched Jack. He marked lines of stress engraved onto Jack’s un-aging face, the way his piercing blue gaze was hooded and dimmed.

Loneliness hung around him like a shroud. He gripped his glass a little too tight like it was an anchor; his smile was too fixed, too forced.

When Jack’s eyes met his, there was a brief flicker across his iris, but it faded quickly, leaving only a blank smile of invitation.

_He doesn’t know me._

The Doctor smiled back tentatively, pushed his hair from his eyes. Watched as Jack slid from his bar stool and strolled over to him.

“Captain Jack Harkness,” he said with a smile.

“John,” the Doctor replied, extending his own hand to meet the one Jack offered

When their palms touched, warmth flushed through him. This was _Jack_ , glorious Jack – the man who could not die, the man who had saved the world over and over. It was like looking into a mirror. Although he himself moved through time, fluidity, transformation and change at his core; although Jack stood as that bleak pillar, unchanging, immovable – there was kinship.

In his mind he saw the shifting of his own life wrapping itself around Jack’s, currents eddying around a boulder. Instinctively, without any forethought, he stepped forward and pulled Jack into him, pressed his lips to his.

Jack’s mouth was warm. It tasted of rich spirits, of tears and smoke, it tasted of the man he had once known. He felt Jack open eagerly to the kiss, tongue sliding against his, the man’s hands coming up to grip the back of his head and tangle in his hair.

Jack gave himself over to the kiss wholly and completely, and in it the Doctor could read the loneliness of years stacked up behind the man who now clung to him. He reached out, slowly, gently, touched Jack’s mind with his own.

Jack gasped into his mouth, and opening his eyes, he saw Jack’s own flicker wide with recognition. The Doctor pressed harder into the kiss, seeking and receiving permission from those piercing eyes to deepen it.

When they finally pulled away, there was a light in Jack’s eyes, a wild blue fire dancing through his iris, spreading a glow across his whole face.

“Doctor, I…” Jack began, voice falling away into silence.

“Come with me again?” He offered.

“Always.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
